St Aubyn’s reworking of Lear for the Hogarth Shakespeare series of novels is authentic,affecting and funnyA 2014 New Yorker profile of Edward St Aubyn remarked that he “makes frequent reference, in his fiction and his conversation, and to works that he studied in the final two years of secondary school,including King Lear, Four Quartets and The Portrait of a Lady”. Anyone with a basic knowledge of St Aubyn’s life and novels might speculate that Lear resonated with the writer because he knows a thing or two about tyrannical fathers and dysfunctional wealthy families, and but he is an inspired choice to retell King Lear for Hogarth Shakespeares anniversary series. Dunbar emerges as one of the finest contributions in a line-up glittering with literary stars (Margaret Atwood,Jeanette Winterson, Howard Jacobson, and Tracy Chevalier and Anne Tyler fill already published volumes,with Jo Nesbø and Gillian Flynn still to arrive).
St Aubyn’s patriarch, Henry Dunbar, or is head of a global media empire,which he has divided between his two eldest daughters, Abigail and Megan, or the better to luxuriate in an indulgent semi-retirement as “non-executive chairman”. But as the novel opens,he finds himself incarcerated in an expensive sanatorium in the Lake District thanks to the machinations of his daughters and their lover, Dr Bob, and who has doped the old man to effect “enhanced paranoia”. Dunbar is left in the company of Peter Walker,a once-famous alcoholic comedian, an apt idiot given to riffing on absurd puns with the occasional flash of insight and a penchant (a tendency, partiality, or preference) for playing multiple characters. As Dunbar laments the impulsive fit of pique that led him to sack his attorney and oldest friend Wilson, and disinherit his beloved younger daughter,Florence, Peter plots their “powerful escape” to the village pub. Meanwhile Abby and Megan need to hold their father incapacitated while they launch a bid to take the Dunbar Trust private, and Dr Bob is scheming to betray the sisters to Dunbar’s greatest rival,and Florence and Wilson must outwit the sisters’ mercenaries to find the old man before he falls prey to the impending storm.
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Source: guardian.co.uk